They deserve no less, my colleague from the New Democratic Party has just told me, particularly now on a Friday when our hearts turn to the weekend. I think that Canadians watching CPAC today would agree with me that this is a public policy issue.
I see our pages in the House today. If we consider the interests of our young people, our pages and university students as they go forth and get older, I am sure the members opposite would agree that they should not be wasting their lives on bad tasting beer from large scale commercial breweries.
In a serious sense, I do commend the government for having addressed the health issues of cigarettes and the excise taxes on cigarettes. I do think we have to become a heck of a lot more innovative and creative than we have been in terms of creating public policy that is effective in reducing the incidence of smoking. Again, we have to treat moderate wine and alcohol consumption very differently from cigarette consumption. One cigarette is bad for the health but one glass of wine is not, unless one has an addiction. I would argue that we ought to be treating these a little differently.
In a general sense I do wish that we would see not just the government's predilection to increasing excise taxes but an actual tax reform package from the government focused on a wide range of issues such as that of enhancing and improving productivity. Our declining productivity levels, particularly the degree to which productivity growth in other countries has exceeded that of Canada, has had a very negative impact on our standard of living and quality of life and threatens significantly the standard of living we can depend on as we move forward.
The Canadian dollar has lost 20% of its value compared to the U.S. dollar since 1993, largely based on the fact that our productivity levels have been slipping compared to those of our largest competitor, the U.S. The Prime Minister says that it is all right, that our currency is doing better compared to some other currencies such as the ruble, but the fact is that given the degree to which our trade is focused on the U.S., the only comparison that really matters is the one with the U.S. Even if we look at some of our other trading partners like the U.K., our dollar has lost 15% under the government's watch against the pound sterling. Our dollar is doing badly compared to the Mexican peso, that great bastion of fiscal fortitude.
When we see a drop in the value of our Canadian dollar, it is a pay cut for every Canadian. The Prime Minister has stated that a low Canadian dollar is good for exports. Of course the logical corollary of that argument is that if we reduce the dollar to zero, Canada could be the greatest exporting nation in the world. That makes about as much sense as the Deputy Prime Minister when his industry minister made the statement that high taxes were good for productivity because they would make Canadian businesses and individuals work harder.
In a general sense I wish the government actually would address issues of tax reform focused on productivity, regulatory reform focused on productivity, interprovincial trade barriers that impede productivity, and the 10 different securities commissions in Canada, which are a bane to raising capital for growth and expansion. I wish the government would start thinking about some of these issues and be a little more proactive as opposed to always reacting to polls in responding to the challenges and opportunities that face Canadians as we look forward to what is an exciting but universally accepted as a more competitive century ahead of us.